BoI raises €1bn facility to support MSMEs, others

The Bank of Industry (BOI) has announced the successful completion of a landmark €1 billion Guaranteed Senior Loan Facility to further enhance its capacity to deliver on its mandate in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s economic diversification agenda.

The bank said the Central Bank of Nigeria and the CBN Committee of Governors supported it by providing a full guarantee to facilitate the facility and a 100% currency swop to mitigate the foreign exchange rate risk.

The Africa Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) is the agent bank. “A syndicate of financial institutions arranged by the IMLAs has indicated strong interest in participating in the general phase of the ongoing syndication, and BOI has an option to increase the facility size up to 1.5bn euros after the general syndication,” the bank said.

It further said that the deal was quite unique and the first of its kind by any financial institution in Nigeria both in terms of size and structure.”

The Managing Director of the bank, Mr Kayode Pitan, said, “At a time when international capital markets are shut to many borrowers, and when capital is prohibitively expensive, through this innovative transaction structure and the AFC Guarantee, BOI was not only able to raise liquidity, but also able to diversify its funding sources and attract new lenders.”

This is the fifth time BOI has successfully raised funds in the international markets since 2018. With the conclusion of this transaction, total funds raised by the bank from 2018 to date is in excess of $5bn.

“The proceeds of this deal, like in our previous ones, will be utilized to provide much needed medium to long term finance to Nigerian MSMEs and Large Enterprises with bankable transactions at affordable naira interest rates,” Pitan said.

Between 2015 and 2021, BoI with the support of its various stakeholders disbursed over N1.2tn to 4,205,920 enterprises, thus creating over 9,048,444mn estimated direct and indirect jobs.